Gamers, Beauty, and Capitalism
Вставка
- Опубліковано 20 чер 2024
- Stellar Blade is the newest controversial video game to come out, and seems to be sparking a ton of discussion due to its main character Eve. She was designed to be as appealing as possible, but are some people upset by this? Or is this controversy among gamers absolutely manufactured to drum up sales?
Spoiler: I think it's the latter.
Chapters:
0:00 Why Are People Talking About Stellar Blade?
3:04 Are Sexy Characters in Video Games Okay?
7:39 Investigating the Various Controversies of Stellar Blade
12:45 The Left vs Right Over Stellar Blade
16:59 Eve's Character Model
19:28 Is Big Gaming Censoring Beautiful Women? (Senran Kagura)
21:48 The Big Problem with the Gaming Industry
25:14 Stellar Blade, Controversy, and Calculated Risks
27:17 Is Stellar Blade Actually Controversial?
30:48 "You Can't Have a Beautiful Woman in a Game Anymore" (The Last of Us 2, Spider-Man 2, Horizon Zero Dawn)
32:46 Sony Doesn't Take Risks
34:58 "Safe" is Mainstream
37:03 Ultimately, I'm Not Going to Change Your Mind - Фільми й анімація
I feel like I have to understand the South Korean gender war in order to understand why Stellar Blade was made.
No, we don’t need a 2 hour long video split in multiple parts.
Basically, South Korea is the perfect example of how anti-feminism always leads to- and is ultimately centred around- absolute hatred of women. Birth rates are declining because the men have made themselves utterly unlovable and impossible for women to tolerate being around.
Basically South Korea is the prime example of what anti-feminism really is (absolute misogyny) and what is always leads to when it’s allowed to fester (males making themselves utterly unlovable, to the point where women have to avoid partnering with them at all costs, and the birth rate declines below replacement level.)
Basically SK is a dying country with birth rates below replacement level, because anti-feminism has made the male population utterly unlovable. To the extant that women cannot stand to partner up with them. So those men turn to video games to distract themselves from how miserable their own anti-feminism has made them. They craft those games with the idea of what they think women should be, instead of working on themselves.
SK has birthrates below replacement level, it’s really incredible. Anti-feminism really is the death-knell of civilizations now, half the population made themselves unl0vable to women, destroying the potential for future families.
Praying for health in the comment section
It's only a matter of time before it goes wild.
@@agramuglia About as wild as chat in a VinnyVinesauce stream... So... Pretty normal.
🙏🙏🙏🙏
I like how Baldur’s Gate III is “safe sex” when streamers can’t show those scenes on UA-cam or Twitch but are everywhere in certain adult websites 😂
Yes, the game where you can bed a bear is safe.
It's safe in the sense that it's safe from moral judgement. To understand what I'm saying open any media mainstream publication and count how many times they praise BG III's sexuality, or how many articles are dedicated to enthusiastically "goon" on sexy male characters.
Then open the same media and count how many times they found something "problematic" about any game with a traditional straight male appeal (even Street Fighter VI went through this, as soon as the leotard costume for Cammy came out).
Lately I followed the discussion on X about Stellar Blade, and I came out with a pretty clear definition of what is safe and what isn't (from the keyboards of the gaming journalists and western developers themselves): basically, if there's something gay in a piece of media, anything, it's safe,.If it caters to straight men (or lesbians, but they apparently don't count), it's morally reprehensible.
On the visual side: if the women are: either muscular, imposing, dominating, androgynous, with harsh male-like features (trans-coded they call them) then it's safe, if it's the other way around it's immoral.
I hope you got something out of this.
It's cause it's a reference to loli/underage 'sexy'. BG3 doesn't have underage stuff in it so it's considered safe. This is aaaaallll about a small subsect of gamers being upset about sexy young girls in their games.
@@HellyeahRook I mean I guess there is a fair bit of that in games. Also BG3 has consent and the like, like a lot of stuff in some games is voyeurism or it is targeted at children or just straight up harassment. I can see how people might object to that hard.
A big difference is that the sexualization in BG 3 and a bunch of other Western RPGs is shown in the context of consensual relationships, and it's not just that the characters look sexy.
Look into how crazy South Korean gamers treat feminism. It's unbelievable. I thought it was not real at first that's how nuts it is
South Korea is a perfect example of what anti-feminism really means, and what it always leads to: absolute hatred of women. Women in any position of power (even low-level politicians) get randomly attacked by men all the time. The birth rates are abysmal, because the women cannot stand to parter up with the men there. South Korea might literally fall because of it, and it will be anti-feminism’s fault.
how bad is it?
@@KalicoKal think gamer gate but perpetual. That is their baseline. Their whole gamer culture there is a cesspool of mysoginistic hate and extremist to the point of mobbing company buildings for the sin of making a man looking more submissive than a woman (They gave him a choker and the women had a more covering swimsuit.)
@@KalicoKalbad enough that the Chinese gamers, who aren’t exactly good with women either, are going “wtf dude you need to chill”.
And as in, Korean misogynists are so rabid that companies are changing game promotional material and firing employees
@@KalicoKal ua-cam.com/video/-Im4YAMWK74/v-deo.htmlsi=RIj7nC6GvuD-bGA4
Saying its revolutionary is stupidity at least for me. Like lol i grew up on bloodrayne like it seems to me some of these gamers dont play older games.
“Older games” That’s the point… Such a bad strawman as well. A small amount of people using a term wrong is meaningless. The vast majority are saying it’s a return to form, literally the opposite.
@@ExpertContrarianWell then people should not say something is revolutionary if they don't know whether or not something is indeed revolutionary. Throwing around that word implies knowledge of history.
@@WaruiDeshouCool, you’re still missing the point 😂
@@ExpertContrarian You're saying traditionally attractive, sexually provocative women are only in older games, and that's not true. Gacha games, current gen fighting games, skins galore in every genre, there are modern options everywhere. 🤷♂
@@ExpertContrarian Nier is not an older game.
The people who think that women aren't sexy in games anymore aren't actually playing games. There are so many JRPGs with women who are really hot, fighting games with women who are really hot and a lot of them are on the PS5. There has been three Granblue Fantasy games in the last few years and there is a whole race of women who are big chested, short stack ladies with horns. Pretty much any Atlus game that comes out has gorgeous women in it: Unicorn Overlord, any of the Persona games, etc. And the people who get mad about Aloy just come off seeming really silly to me; she's an attractive woman to some people. There are a lot of smaller games out there in the same kind of world as Senran Kagura. I would much rather have another one of those than another souls-lite like Stellar Blade.
I'm playing Forbidden west and I just keep thinking how pretty Aloy is, in the first game I thought she looked cute but lifeless (like most of the characters) but in HFW she looks so beautiful.
@@K.C-2049 but apparently some people think she is ugly😂😂 those people need to touch grass
So essentially just switch your product consumption to another country.
I had this big piece about how the positioning of this game and sexuality in gaming as a culture war front had shades of gamergate tactics and how the "safe" vs "unsafe" sexuality argument felt like a dog whistle for framing non conventional sexual content (read, LGBT+ content) as invading "normal" spaces. Then I accidently refreshed the page and lost it all and I don't have the energy to retype all of it...
also if they're example of "ugly" girls in games are normal looking women their ideas of women are heavily skewed by hyper sexual content and they should go touch grass.
You don’t know what a dog whistle is. It was never a secret what people were referring to. As we can see with Hades 2. it's a completely correct take
If I understand correctly, safe means fanservicy?! Do Gamers (TM) feel "unsafe" in games, where there are no fanservice?! How fragile of them.
/kidding
@@moustik31 you did not understand correctly 😂
That’s the great thing about reality being there’s ugly/normal looking girls and beautiful/sexy women too yet if the “normal looking girls” look completely different then the IRL models/actors then yes you are actively making them look bad and is a thing so you should cut it out or criticize it rather then complain about sexy characters in fantasy games and “touch grass”
Genuinely my problem with Eve is that she just looks so.... "We have 2B at home". Nier Automata and Bayonetta both have very distinctive sexy lady characters who's gimmick is easy to understand with one look. Eve looks like a weird cyber race car driver. The design should have gone through more drafts in my opinion.
Everything else admittedly looks kinda cool. Kinda sci fi dieselpunk.
Yeah, Stellar Blade looks pretty, and it'll probably be fun, but that turbo online engagement bait stance of "this is what a real woman looks like! Not these mannish brutes in these woke games!" That shit is so annoying. Especially when they intentionally use bad screenshots of the "ugly" characters to try to prove their point.
On Eve, her design is definitely not 1:1 with the irl model. The director says they only used Shin Jae-Eun's body as reference, and frankly Eve's thighs look much thicker still. Eve's face is an original design.
Anyway, a video critique, not trying to be rude: dialog is kinda repetitive. I figure this wasn't scripted, which is totally fine, but.
💯
bro i draw r34 and you are spot on its exclusively just her bust they left alone it literally would have been cheaper to pay an artist to design eve even if the model did it for free just based on the cost of the tech to scan her in you need dozens of high quality cameras that cost hundreds to thousands of dollars for that
Yeah, I just fiind Eve boring and whatever. Like sure she's conventionally attractive but I don't give a fuck. I'm not gonna care about a wooden character because they are are hot. Especially because she doesn't interact with it all. She's sexualized, but not allowed to be sexual.
The real point is if the game is gonna be fun. World, characters, and story looks boring so far and gameplay seems okay. Hopefully it picks up and the demo was just uncharacteristically weak.
@@beyvntarson3123 idk yoko taro literally only praised when he met with stellar blades creator so im guessing its average at best but not world breaking
Yeah, it's odd that he kept bringing up the fact that a model did mo-cap for it when the design, especially the face, looks nothing like her.
Stellar Blade ain't the only thing that came, ya know what I'm saying? ... YOU KNOW WHAT I AM SAYING?!
And anyone who has been following the Korean game market would not at all have been surprised with the controversy behind this game. There is an exceptional "anti-woke" "anti-feminism" pushback from the Korean market, that has seen some buy-in and grab-in from western markets for a number of reasons ranging from nostalgia to grifting. This game, by its very nature, was going to have a very specific subset of fans that were ready to come to blows over it.
BASED SOUTH KOREA.
As someone who has a PS5 and played the demo, I am bummered that it is more like Sekiro and less like Devil May Cry, Bayonetta and Nier.
Maybe it's just my fatigue with all the souslikes talking.
There is no denying that From Software earned every bit of praise as a phenomenal developer.
However, I wish other developers would follow other aspects that make From Software what it is(i.e. world building), instead of just grabbing the souls formula and putting it into their games.
I want more games where the player is in control, instead of being made of sand and ready to be crushed by even the slightest misstep.
I feel that. Especially how flashy and outlandish this game looks.
And the problem with trying to copy From is that most developers just aren’t that good.
I agree. I mean, it's a good game but the Souls-style gameplay felt a detriment to the flashier combat that it wanted to go for.
I may be wrong, it's just a demo but it felt like one of those games I'll wait unti it goes to sale/free to Playstation Plus before I get to a playthrough.
@@OnyxSkiesXIX Nioh and Lies of P were good, but that's just it, not every game has to follow in the footsteps of the Souls formula.
You are in control. You probably just aren’t very good.
I love that God of War had an interactive sex minigame 2 years before hot coffee
Personally, I dislike Stellar Blade's character design because it creeps me out. The combination of hyperrealistic textures (all that glistening) with exagerrated proportions falls right into the uncanny valley for me.
Interesting take because imho a “shiny” character modeled by a real person doesn’t quite look inhuman or monstrous to me,but hey I guess it’s subjective for people I’m more of a traditional scary/uncanny type, I wouldn’t say I dislike the character design as then I’d have to say the same with Beyonetta or 2B to each there own.
To be perfectly frank, Hyung-Tae Kim has been designing characters in this style for more than two decades now. Him and J. Scott Campbell should battle it out to see who can draw a character with the most wonky proportions.
Also, the Leisure Larry name drop was a flex, and I respect that.
UA-camr HappyDaddyKratos did his homework and pieced together a good chunk of the game's lore from the demo and all of the promotional materials. EVE's looks and outfits have a reason for looking the way they look, she is essentially a love doll repurposed as a cyborg soldier.
Nier but without human experimentation.
I think at least part of the problem comes from the clear double standards, most of the time games have male characters wearing very practical clothes and the women wear lingerie. Personally I’d like to see more of a balance, if you’re game is meant to be goofy and kind of sexy then put men in metal speedos next to the women in metal bikinis, if you want something a little more grounded in reality then let the women cover up their vital organs. It looks stupid when you try to have it both ways
There doesn’t need to be a balance. Strange how you don’t care about this balance when it comes from western developers, objectifying men and not women
@@ExpertContrarianwhere are the games objectifying men?
@@Bob-bs9okyou think objectification is just skimpy clothing? 😂😂😂
@@ExpertContrarian I was just asking for examples?
Also objectificanion isn't *just* skimpy clothing, that is only part of it. Skimpy clothing is sexualisation, the objectification is due to how women typically only exist as narrative tools, not characters.
@@Bob-bs9ok if you know that it’s treating peoples as objects then you should be able to come up with your own examples. You’re being disingenuous. You just don’t care when it’s one way. The vast majority of depictions of men are only as enemies to be destroyed…
I think that the people talking about "safe" sexy are in denial that they are a part of society. Society has to be the people who disagree with them, it cannot be them
And what makes it so ironic is that there are a lot of woke things in stellar blade that the echo chamber incels will never see because they’re too dumbfounded like Lilly one of the main characters being a Lesbian and a Greek Trans statues in added to the game as well.
Ikr? Similarly, I saw cons. audiences rejoice, that there were no Black characters in Shogun and therefore, they are hailing the show as a win for their side. And as someone, who watched the og show I cackled: "wokeness" won big time lmao!
Wait Lily is canonically lesbian?
Holy crap... Considering all these chuds are also homophobic, we should ship her with Eve to piss them off even more! I think "LilEve" sounds like a good ship name, plus I played the game and they have more chemistry with each other than they ever did with Adam
Eve design may have been based on a scanned real life model but the final product has clear alterations and changes that don't quite reflect the real person that was based on.
its literally only the models bust they left unchanged...it literally would have been cheaper to pay 1 artist to design eve and another to make the model they didnt need several dozen high quality cameras to scan a model in if they wanted to make a thick character
They definitely touched up her body. Shin Jae-eun provided the "base" for Eve's body. Her face was created in house by Shift Up's artists. Her design and proportions overall looks like Kim Hyung Tae's past work.
It’s so bizarre that people are acting like female video game characters have never been sexy. Look at Ivy from the Soul Calibur. She’s constantly in skimpy outfits. People don’t care if you want to play a game with a character that is made to be hot at all but a lot of weird, right-wingers think there is some war against sexiness.
No? I think people just want variety in female designs and characters. Not all games have to feature extremely sexy women in skimpy outfits and not all games have to be sexless. Why can’t people understand that?
Today is launch day for Stellar Blade. It’s been a constant in the social feeds for months. Your video is the first I’ve seen mention the gameplay in any way.
All I can say about Stellar Blade at this point is that WHEN NO ONE HAS YET TO PLAY THE FULL GAME, NO ONE CAN JUDGE IF THE MAIN CHARACTER IS EMPTY EYE-CANDY DOLL OR NOT.
That whole "safe horny" discourse reminded me of secondary school locker room talks, where they thought I was a weirdo for thinking blondes are overrated.
Also you could make a video on how criticism of sexual objectification often done from a very conservative perspective, and how it often worded in sexist ways. I've seen a lot of women (some of whom were pretty progressive) who felt they were attacked by those very same criticisms.
"who felt"... see that's the problem... you'll have feelings and then hold others responsible for your feelings because you read shit that isn't said into words. your feelings your problems, not everyone else's.
Yes, when discussing sexual matters some progressives sound like they can easily convert to religious conservative.
@@SkorpionSSs That's you. You're projecting.
@@lisprn-tt1tuI think a context based approach regarding the sexualization of people in general is much more helpful - after all, one of the core fundamental reasoning against objectification is violation of choice
Stellar Blade has been one of my most anticipated games for years. The gameplay, concept, and visuals look very appealing to me. I played the demo, and was not disappointed. It just made me want to buy the game even more. And I really love Eve's design, along with her various outfits. And the weird thing is, I'm a gay person. I really like waifus, but in the same way gays like divas. This might sound weird, but I really enjoy the waifu aesthetic, because it's both empowerment and escapism for me as a gay masc person. And I know I'm not alone in that. Both queer people and even straight women ( especially women from the countries these types of games are made in ) love these types of characters not because we're attracted to them, but because we wanna be like them. Despite the fact that we aren't always the target demo for these characters. It's why I have a strong interest in this kind of media ( including several gachas, like Shift Up's Nikke ( which i still haven't played ). Listen, games are expensive, and the gachas I play are genuinely really good and ftp friendly ). And this type of media is of course good not because of the attractive designs, the designs are just the cherry one top of an delicious sundae. So it really sucks when I see entitled misogynists view this topic as a black and white thing, and treat waifus as the one thing that makes a game good, rather than acknowledging the nuances of who likes those characters and why, and that attractive characters don't always sale games/make a game good. It's also worth acknowledging the people who are attractive to waifus, but aren't being weird about it. They're just trying to enjoy a character's design without wanting to get wrapped up in a culture war. Sorry if this came off as very rambling. I'm just really passionate about this topic.
your not a gamer for playing gatcha (unless your f2p)
@@chaserseven2886 nah whales are gamers too
24:40 when it comes to sex and sexuality in media, when it IS censored it’s typically the right wing doing it, it’s conservative and fundamentalist religious groups, etc
Yeah well nowadays it's the left wing doing it.
The main issue I have with these culture war types is that they muddy the discourse when it comes to actual issues in the gaming industry. The over bloated budgets, layoffs, over exaggerated ROI for greedy investors that don't even care about the art, microtransactions, etc. These are the actual issues. Not some safe horny bs. I don't know how conservatives easily fall for non issues when everything else is so obvious.
Maybe journos should report on that, instead of how much of a predator you are if you like Stellar Blade?
@@SkorpionSSs first off, they DO report on that. Both mainstream and non mainstream journalists talk about the actual issues quite often. It's also been a talking point for almost a year now. Your algorithm on social media must be screwed up if you're not seeing it.
2. U make it seem like journalists have had this prime focus on SB's audience. Not true. There's literally one, or at the most, 3 articles that spoke about the culture war around SB. It's not a mainstream topic. People just pretend that it is.
@@xMawkKnightx Funny cause all I see Kotaku and the like post lately is culture war bullshit.
But hey, maybe it really is just the algorithm since you can't pay me to access their site.
@@SkorpionSSs it's that kind of non argument that just shows me that you're chronically on twitter. Mentioning kotaku isn't the argument u think it is. Most ppl on all aisles don't agree with their articles so you're not saying much there. I'm going to assume that you not only follow kotaku, but also the editor and some other staff members because u wanna pick apart everything lil thing they post. U probably also follow many culture war accounts. I mean... fine? U do u, but then u can't bring anything to the table because your algorithm is stuck in a culture war bs bubble. See my point?
@@xMawkKnightx my algorithm is mostly reddit stories about failed relationships and cheating, with some stand-up comedy and asmongold videos :-/ I'm mentioning kotaku because they are one of the most prominent gaming journalism sites and are very liked by industry professionals.
A lot of people say "safe sexy" they mean loli stuff........
Wait, they think the characters in Baldur's Gate 3 aren't sexy? Do... do they have eyes? Did their screens glitch out when they met Shadowheart and they somehow failed to recruit her?
Like, I get that, while PLENTY of straight men are into Karlach and Lae'zel, Karlach's a little more buff than the bodies we usually consider conventionally attractive, and personally, I do get being weirded out by Lae'zel's lack of nose. But SHADOWHEART?
And don't even get me started on Minthara, there are plenty of people who planned on being a hero who participated in the deaths of lots of innocent tieflings JUST to get to romance Minthara.
This is great video but there's a point you missed about the sony senran kagura point. There was a time when sony was censoring japanese ecchi games senrab kagura was just one of them. It was so prevalent it was getting recommended people buy the switch or pc version of visual novels or games with an anime/manga style to them because at the time they had the uncensored releases in both the localized and original japanese versions. So eventually developers who enjoyed making those games eventually pivoted to either exclusively switch or exclusively PC and stopped releasing games on the ps4/ps5. This effected sony's ultimate bottom line that they started to be lax with the restrictions and eventually do away with them entirely
Have Sony ever started that they don’t enforce theirs restrictions anymore?
@@cloudmv15 as far as I can tell there haven't been any restrictions on games that come out on multiple platforms anymore. Every game is now the same no matter the platform. Whether it's still with exclusives that's a different story but considering final fantasy and Stellar blade they likely quietly got rid of them
The issue is more the camera rather than the design itself. When the protagonist's butt is deliberately centered, it raises concerns from a feminist perspective of the media studies. This type of approach is by all means and purposes an objectifying of the woman's body, which is counterproductive to creating more respectful and inclusive gaming environment for women. There is a delicate balance between promoting female sexual empowerment and objectification of the women's bodies for male consumption. It's fine to portray woman's body as sexy. What is not fine is treating said body as something to be consumed by men through male gaze. An object, rather than a person. This type of practice often contributes to perpetuation of harmful stereotypes and behaviors towards women in real life. Baldur's Gate 3 is indeed a great game. It's a well-designed game that prioritizes characters and story over objectification of their bodies. The camera angles in BG3 are very respectful, avoiding unnecessary focus on physical attributes of character's bodies (yes, even in sex scenes, the camera focuses more on the act itself than the details of the physical bodies involved). This approach aligns with feminist media studies that focus on representing characters in a respectful and non-exploitative manner. It's true that research has shown that queer women also respond to male gaze. It doesn't mean however, that we shouldn't address the issue of objectification. We should be mindful of the messages it sends to groups that already have harmful preconceived notions about women, their bodies and their place in society. I'm by no means trying to say "blame the game rather than the people who use it to do harm", because this type of approach is never something I would support. What I mean to say is that every medium speaks for itself and sends messages that can be harmful, but even if that's the case they shouldn't be censored, but their implications should be definitely discussed. By doing so, we can combat the notion that real women are simply objects that exist solely for male satisfaction, both within the gaming community and in real life.
Does the controversy surrounding this game is mostly about the treatment of female bodies in the gaming industry? Yes. However, that is an issue that existed for years, and was the reason behind real-world harassment of women within video game spaces and the game industry. It's true that video games that were made by people who didn't view women as people for gamers who shared such views, contributed to real world harm being done. Stating that neither of the presented arguments is about the Stellar Blade itself is irrelevant, as the focus of the controversy was never the game, but the perpetuation of objectification of women. This game serves as just another example, rather than the source.
I think that people who saw the trailers and shown their displeasure with the game didn't inherently oppose the inclusion of sexuality and sexy characters, but were concerned about how their bodies are treated by the game's camera in context of the objectification. Which are two different things. A naked woman can stand in the center of the room and never be framed in an objectifying way, while still being sexually alluring. The camera is capable of portraying character's body in a respectful way, no matter how it looks. Focusing on specific parts of the body however can be seen as to be done for the sole reason of objectification, as this type of camera framing carries implicit connotations as such. If the game industry, which has historically been male-dominated, didn't continuously produce and promote video games that aligned with the views of sexist gamers since its inception, it would likely not contribute to aggressive behavior of those gamers in form of attempting to exclude others from this space - particularly women, queer people, and people of color, by claiming that these spaces are exclusively meant for a select group of gamers (i.e. the gamer dudebros) and viewing any game not tailored to their specific demographic as a threat to their community. (They often act like children who throw a tantrum because another child dared to enter "their" sandbox). Similarly in the film industry there has been a long-standing issue where queer people and people of color have been depicted as villains by either coding the villains with stereotypical behaviors or depicting them with racial features. This in turn perpetuated the negative stereotypes of those groups by reinforcing the idea of them representing the "bad guy" that needs to be defeated. As a result, there is now a growing expectation among audiences for movies to feature these marginalized groups in positive and realistic roles, such as heroes, friends, and romantic partners, in order to accurately reflect the diversity of the real world. As well as to move away from outdated and harmful stereotypes perpetuated by past media representations which both stemmed from people's biases, but also fed them as well. We can't simply ignore that this issue is a loop. People who are biased create media that represent their biases, and then people with the same biases consume those media and end up confirming their pre-existing biases. Only by creating more media that don't feed those biases, we can actually combat this issue. (And of course by exposing biased people to those media - which is much easier when there is a lot of them rather than singular popular examples).
Capitalism as an issue of the game industry is also definitely at fault here. Instead of focusing on money, game studios should allow their developers to create video games for any audience, not only the ones that earn the studio the most money. This type of approach could improve the industry as a whole, as it would encourage the diversification of titles that are released, and diminish the perception that "all video games objectify women" by simply balancing the numbers out. By creating the titles that would cater to the niches which would not approve of such objectification we could created a more balanced representation within the industry. After all something is a problem only when it's thwarting anything different in size.
It's actually very funny that conservative pushback against sexuality in the video games ended in censorship that serves no one. While at the same time conservative gamers who support such views in real life by voting for conservative party or actively pushing non-men from gaming spaces, want sexy women in video games without realizing that they themselves made it impossible for them to exist in the first place.
I feel this article tackles the issues around this game best: www.inverse.com/gaming/stellar-blade-the-male-gaze-sweet-baby
Anyway, I know I already wrote a bible, so I will try to finish quickly. My niche are feminist media studies, so obviously this topic is important to me. If there is truly nobody that cares about this issue, then I'm dead. Once again, the design of Eve is not a concern, especially considering she is based on real Korean women (however I noticed in the comments here that people raised concerns in regard to how much the model's body was changed). The problem is the camera itself that doesn't treat Eve as a person, but rather as an object to ogle. However sad it is, we shouldn't call for censorship. Problematic media have a place to exist, and nobody is a monster for enjoying them. Talking about them is beneficial for everyone. Censoring them is beneficial to none. However, we shouldn't ignore that such choice caters to the pre-existing beliefs and biases of its target audience, and it's the same for any other issue like queerphobia, racism, ableism etc. If representation didn't matter at all, minorities wouldn't push for more representation of it. It doesn't only help us see ourselves reflected in the media we consume, but also reminds others that we are all equal as human beings. That we are all the same people. Movie or a game showing a certain group in a positive light can do wonders for people who may not have previously been exposed to those groups. It helps them challenge pre-conceived notions that they may have been taught by their family or society, which may have portrayed these groups as inferior or lacking in humanity. (And as we all know - dehumanization is the first step to eradication of those you don't see as human).
The same principle should also be applied to female characters in video games. Women can be portrayed as sexually alluring, however, it is important to also show those women as individuals with their own aspirations, motivations, and feelings. To hammer home that they're people just like men it's important to depict them as complex individuals with agency, no matter if they're sexy or not or if they wear baggy or skin-tied clothes. (And as we know from the example of Mikaila from Transformers - objectification takes away from the character, because focus is on their body, rather than who they are as an individual. Camera framing can distract the viewer from listening to the character in favor of ogling them as an object). If Stellar Blade doesn't manage to do so, it will simply be added to the long list of similarly disappointing titles that preferred to create an object of desire, rather than a person. Mind you, a list that is far longer than the list of video games that actually succeeded in giving women justice. Let's just balance it out.
Don't really have much to add, just want to say this was really well written and I basically agree with everything you said. 👍🏽
Sincerely, a trans woman woke feminist game dev/designer that absolutely loves Bayonetta 🖤
W Take, I'm glad there's some actually meaningful discussion to be had here.
Good thing I'm a Yugioh player to not read all of that
@@bunnybreaker Yep, also it's worth adding that there is difference between character expressing themselves sexually and camera ogling them to create similar effect. With character doing so you get far more realistic feeling. You can assume that this character, despite not being real and not having true desires that weren't chosen by the creator, is expressing part of who they are. While with camera you get the feeling of something on display, like a supermodel, but less respectful, more like when papparazzi tries to capture a celebrity when doing something controversial but with a focus on their body parts. It would be frankly very hard to focus on a male character in a game if said game was centering his genitalia that are straining against very skintight suit. It'd be definitely enjoyable to see for queer men, but also would make people get distracted and view said man as an object rather than a person. The example with Mikaila comes to mind again, because I didn't even know that people didn't hear what she said in that scene when she was ogled. I'm asexual so to me, even though she looked sexy and I knew the scene was made to be sexually alluring to men and I found her aesthetically pleasing to look at as a sexy woman in a sexy position, I still listened to her story. It however looks like this simple trick of the camera framing was enough to make most people not even listen to her backstory at all, too distracted by her body. I was truly surprised when I learned that, because her story was very interesting.
@@UziOmega I guess it's convenient that Yu-Gi-Oh is a card game xD However I guess some people could try to find issue in portrayal of the characters on the cards. In their favor is that those characters are not supposed to be people. Just pawns.
all this shit is just the same crap as during gamergate. this game is only 'brave' because some gamers want to be perpetually victimised and under attack tbqh.
Eve looks just as bland as all other korean made videogame characters... I extend the invitation for anyone to name me one singular iconic videogame character that originated from a korean game.
There is no problem with sexy characters, we had Mai from King of Fighters, Cammy, Ada Wong, Tifa, Samus, Bayonetta, 2B, and could list hundreds more for decades... The thing about those characters is that their visual designs, be how they dress, move, and emote, expressed what kind of character they were. Eve on the other hand looks like a lifeless doll with no agency of her own who exists solely to be looked at... This kind of look gets a pass with characters like 2B, since she's a robot... But Eve is not, and being hot isnt a personality trait, cause if it was, Dead or Alive characters would be the most compelling and expertly designed female characters in the history of the industry, and Eve would fit in perfectly along with them. I mean it's even a trope that hot girls are shallow, and Stellar Blade's Eve might be an amazing character, but nothing about the marketing, to the demo suggests that's remotely the case, she's just meat...
And here is the thing, it is fine if she's just meat or one dimensional, look at Mario or Link, and their games are still phenomenal, but people pretend she's more than that, because others shame them for liking meat, and that's how they turn this nothing burger of a game, into a beacon of the culture war, while Sony laughs all the way to the bank, once more making money out of ideological division. Everyone's getting played here.
Arguing that "real women" look like old games "waifus" is WILD and insulting.
Agreed with everything, however, one important thing to mention is that money IS politics, at least in the capitalist world. When he says "it's not the left it's not the right" and talks about greed and capitalism, well, capitalism = the right, it breeds greed. What is capitalism? The political and economical system designed to pursue profit, Capital, money at all costs, not the benefit of gamers or the human race for that matter. The left is precisely against this view, however in the USA the concept of left has really shifted from the class struggle to woke politics (which, may I remind, is all also in benefit of capital, since it's diverging from the nature of the left, and if enough people rebel against the logic of profit by the exploitation of the working class it will fall). It is beneficial for the capitalist system that the left's ideology is reduced to "unimportant matters" such as what he is describing in the video. Every new tech, every "good action" the billionaires make, every new game, every trend, every product that is manufactured, every job, every program, every law, everything, all for profit. Always. And where does that profit comes from? The work that you do, of course. Is your work rightfully converted into money? Well, if there's profit (especially for someone other than you), then no. The profit is the surplus of work you've done that goes to someone else's pocket. That's what capitalism wants, exploit the market and turn everything into a commodity that can be sold at the highest price. With games it's no different. They pump out this games that are dipping in quality because they realised they can cut costs, put out a just decent game barely on the line so we don't stop buying them and profit a ton. I'm a firm believer that the left in the USA (being the world's capitalist beacon that it is) has been reduced to the point both parties are rightwing, one is just more concerned with the illusion of left the "woke" stuff provides. Don't define left or right by moral individual values, but by the relations between work and society. Organisation is the key, guys. Meanwhile let's all buy the new 300 dollar assassin's creed game and see if the black character is supposed to be a samurai or not I guess...
Crazy that people think the woke would hate that when baldurs gate straight up lets you undress ur character, it also won game of the year
Every time you say Masamune Shirow's name, he gets a free deluxe ramen bowl from the Japanese government.
I wish I never got online in 2013 after Tomb Raider the reboot came out and found out that people cared way too much about Lara Croft's appearance because I didn't care about her looks, I cared that the new design made her indistinguishable from other brunette ponytailed action heroes and she was basically female Rambo. And the stuff like her dual pistols, backpack and braid were gone. The things that made her iconic. Especially her sharp wit and confident personality. But the biggest sin to me was that they took the main draw of the original games, the puzzles, and demoted them to optional side content. I still enjoy the first 2 reboot game for what they tried to do, but I don't play tomb raider for the combat or how sexy Lara is. I play to solve difficult puzzles and learn about myths from different cultures. One thing the new games got right was the relic collectables and journal entries. I actually learned stuff from those.
But yeah, the online gamer bros creep me out with how much they focus on female character designs. Like I remember when I played DMC devil may cry (the reboot) and Dante walks out of his trailer naked. That was my awakening. I want sexy men in games honestly. Right now we mostly have Dante, Nero, Leon Kennedy. But like I want a male equivalent to Bayonetta. Someone who's not afraid to lay it all to bare. But still have a soft side.
Gooners being manipulated by corporations to promote their lewd games is so unsurprising.
Another thing concerning Stellar Blade is its role in trying to kickstart a “GamerGate 2.” A lot of the tweets I’ve seen talking about it usually have either a GamerGate hashtag or are by accounts that follow known right or right-leaning figures that have been trying to make “GamerGate 2” a thing.
The problem that a lot of the people trying to manufacture another GamerGate is that it doesn’t seem like they have a real idea or strong motive behind them or a target. They’ve gone from harassing the models of Spider-Man 2, to harassing a story consultant company for being “woke”, to harassing a group of African American women games, to supporting this game to “own the libs.”
Like an endless vicious cycle that sometimes the internet is more of a mistake as the days go by.
Hell, games have always been fun, but fandoms certainly not fun lately like corruption within the system.
Yeah...
No ones trying to start GG 2 over Stellar Blade
@animenexus6 GG1 wasn't made over Anita Specifically, you'll recall. It was a combination of factors then, just as there are a number of alchemists trying to combine factors now.
@@animenexus6 type stellar blade into your search bar and tell me how many accounts that arent covering gameplay start yelling about THE MESSAGE, dei nonsense and gamers being oppressed because omg black people yes the first one was a dig at critical drinker, actually critical drinker, the yellow flash, endymon youll notice a pattern where half them dont play games they just grift and yell about wokeness and then the "gaming channels" dont make gaming videos unless its the b roll for there rant about why video games shouldnt be progressive heres like 4 accounts to show you the stupid shit there doing they change topics every weak to stir up as many people as possible right now there talking about warhammer having fem stodes
Haven't watched the whole video yet, but a HUGE reason why Stellar Blade is selling well is that many people believe that if the game sells well it will show other console devs that there is STILL a market for this ( sexy women in action games). And the idea in supporting this game is that other devs will start making more games like this again, since sexy women in games ( primarily in the west and in some cases in the East have been in a decline). That's the beauty of capitalism ( free markets) is that they don't lie, and the truth is that the numbers based on pre orders alone is INSANE , with stellar blade topping MULTIPLE charts. And the game is already predicted by an analysts to sell over a million units, which if true, is impressive for a brand NEW IP in 2024 , especially considering how expensive video games are to make now. And MANY people were dead set in supporting this game BEFORE the demo came out. So you can't just chuck it up to gameplay of the game either. Since while It helped the game,it isn't the MAIN selling point, just look at the discourse on twitter and youtube for further proof.
Additionally, this idea that Stellar blade is only going to appeal to straight men as I read in an article is stupid, as I've seen PLENTY of women talking about how they like Eve's design, whether it's straight women saying how fashionable her outfit is. Or lesbian women talking about how hot she is. And I'm already seen females cosplay the character for fun. Yes, there will be groups of people who don't like the sexy portrayal of the character ( whether that be feminists on the left) . BUT SO WHAT? The reality is NOT EVERY GAME HAS TO APPEAL TO EVERYONE. Heck, there are TONS of works that I like in anime and gaming that is not mainstream. And I'm cool with that. WHY? BECAUSE I ENJOYED it, and who cares if the vast majority didn't, my only concerns is if the work is profitable enough to get a sequel. Not whether billions of people look at a character of a movie or an anime in the same way as I do. If you need something to be mainstream to feel confident about a product you like. Then you are someone that needs to be validated by others. Which is pathetic IMO and definitely not healthy. Just thought I share my thoughts on this controversy, even though it REALLY SHOULDN'T be one in the first place.
Really it boils down to one thing and one thing alone, and that is it did not bend the knee to this reimagine Ng of who the consumer is, which it is not. Also, and more importantly, it protected the integrity of the creators original vision, something we have very little of anymore.
What I have noticed is that game only count if they sexualise or make only female characters super sexy.
Hades and Buldur's Gate 3 don't count because both genders are sexy but not overly sexualised. I feel like if Stella blade made a fanservicey male characters as well as the female ones people who strongly support this game wouldn't.
To a thirsty man in a content drought frequently burned by a promise of ESG DEI oasis, A pouch of water becomes a treasure.
I sorta have a ear for genuine critique right up until the point some gamer boils down to thinking developers wanna stomp "attractive female characters" for... some reason, and then you realize its complete obsession with a character not given them a boner. Then someone inevitably posts the characters they dislike for being "ugly" and they're just normal ass looking people and you realize... yeah these are not dudes who go outside much.
Take a look at the new Pokémon Go update, and come back here.
@@AT-rp8zy they don’t care about that. They’re not a genuine person.
Yeah, almost as if the concept of diminishing returns doesn`t apply to them. Seeing the same body-type over and over again and not get bored by it.....
25:14 is the crux of this video methinks. The whole video is a banger, but the manufactured outrage discussion needs to he had more.
"this is all an echo chamber argument" was so real
this is all so terminally online lol
Just to point out, it was Mass Effect Andromeda you showed the clip from, not Mass Effect 3.
Good video, though.
Dumb error on my part there, haha! Thanks for pointing it out.
It was a good idea to start the video in a laid-back tone. You were understating the severity of the shitstorm and kept me doubting in you but at
18:16 this is where you finally convinced me. you're right, the game itself was incidental, only a cudgel, to the latest brewing iteration of the culture war. this needed to be said.
I wouldn't say "it's not politics, it's capitalism" though. I got the message, but economics are more entangled with worldview shenanigans than you implied. At least it's more apparent than in the "playing it safe" excuse devs give. The problem is not cronyism, neither is the Friedman doctrine.
Why'd you have to remind me we're not getting another Darkstalkers game, and Capcom's dumb reasoning for it as well?
Edit: so from what I've seen, Eve's model was based off of a real person, but her wasn't used. Personally, I prefer Shin Jae-eun's (the model Eve was based on) face to Eve.
Just wanted to comment that recently,
Princess Maker 2 got a new released announced, and its controversial comtents will be uncensored on all plataforms EXCEPT Playstation
And that isn't the first time such thing happens either, SB was definetively censored by Sony but the game director can't say that in public without risking losing his job
The anti-woke article is so poorly written. Also bro Forbidden Hex Sex came out last year. It's legit a porn game.
Plenty of porn games came out last year, still, none of them is mainstream and almost never are commented by games journos... if they did it, they'd streisan'd them to massive success. You're ignoring the point, this is literally the "just go watch porn" argument.
How many triple A games like Stellar Blade came out last year? Why is it so hard to not be disingenuous?
@@ExpertContrarian How many have we gotten in general? Even back in the 2000s you weren't getting high budget games like a Stellar Blade. I just found the article to be poorly written. I got no issue with the game besides Eve not being the best character.
@@xiuhcoatl4830 And it isn't their job to cover that. Do you need media attention to get validation? Lots of those games get good buzz from word and mouth. I mentioned that game because it's a quality game made by a team that cares.
Go play it instead of arguing on social media.
@@KazeShikamaruhow many? Even less than before. The fact that your example means anything in this context yet you want to criticize the article 😂😂😂
Can the “culture war” go away
Tell game journos stop bitching over stellar blade
Tell that harp y to respect asian or "white adjacent" as they like to call them people first and write more gaming guides instead
@@milliondoller06 k
My guess is if the games journos shut the f up, it'll go away instantly
@@nottius1026 They can't, their egos won't let them.
I thought it was funny that you point out that sexualized characters are "nothing new" in video games and that its a dumb argument, but didn't call out the stellar blade director when you directly quoted how he thinks it's "brave" to do this nowadays
For the longest time, I honestly didn't even think this was a real game. The main character looks AI-generated. The generically "attractive" anime-esque figure and face, the overly shiny, painted-on look of her bodysuit, you know what I mean? It's too pristine to be sexy.
Lmao I always crack up seeing this take. If they don’t look like Abby from the TLOU it’s a problem 😂
@@ExpertContrarian Projecting a little hard there, buddy; Abby's deliberately unattractive design has no bearing on my disinterest in Eve's bland, generic sex appeal.
To essentially answer the gameplay question as I did play the demo, think Nier Automata (and the first Nier too) hack and slash. Goes for the general aesthetic as well.
Sony ain't the publisher of the Senran Kagura games...
It's completely contextual, but women that like women do have problems with sexualized protagonists, particularly if that protagonist is the playable character and particularly if that character is a silent protagonists. The idea being that the player is supposed to identify with the protagonists and become immersed as the protagonist. In these cases, women are no longer only looking at the fan service, they are made to become the fan service, and they very much do not like or appreciate that.
3:38 I remember hearing they spent the most time on her backside. The view of her behind. In terms of effort. And to me that’s just…. SAD. I would have spent time in her as a whole, on all of the characters as a whole.
Heck yeah Space Dandy clip!! 😄
O k i'm gonna help you with the dark stalker thing. It wasn't steam, it was the pSp
About the respinse you received when asking about the gameplay, there's some context to understand. Many peoole trashing the game have been saying ALL they've been seeing is people parading Eve's figure and no gameplay at all. Though there may have been a hint of truth, the counterpoint was, of course there's a demo to try and even if you don't/can't play it yourself said demo has many gameplay videos on UA-cam that were easy enough to search (Tl;dr, if you wanna see the game its easy enough to do just that) and everyone was getting kinda sick of having to point that out.
He was very obviously trying to bait
@@ExpertContrarian Bait and rage engagement is all little Anthony has.
@@Duran13XIII bait and rage? Which is funny since it’s always from your side your projection is way on the head you clown.
I mean a lot of people don't focus on the gameplay
I disagree on the point of Anita Sarkeesian. What she was doing was looking at the bigger picture of tropes, and how they tend to treat women as sex objects first rather than characters. She taught me that the problem isn't sexuality at all. It's that women in video games, for a long time, felt like they were MANDATED to have T&A regardless of the context.
This is why reactionaries are using A.I to make female characters more like porn models. They want to be able to objectify women and are like toddlers refusing to share their toys.
You are not alone in this. I never got an impression that Anita wanted to censor internet and hated sex workers, or hated female sexuality.
and those same dudes "defending" eve and "beautiful" game characters dont see the sexism in complaining about 10 games with normal levels of attractive female characters and trying to start a culture war over it just because they arent some hyper sexual doll they can slide up and down. the way there treating the fallout shows actress might as well be proof they are exactly who that ign article was talking about that dont give a crap about why characters like 2b or bayonetta are loved and seen as more than just hot for the sake of it too the point it bleeds into real life judging real women on a standard based on there favorite A.I waifu
@@KalicoKal I don't think Anita's point was to "start a culture war". Tropes are things in fiction that simply exist if we want it or not, and people who deal with media talk about them constantly. Highlighting their existence is not for the sake of starting a war. It's was both for academic purpose and to start conversation about women representation and quality of it in media overall. (If you see representation as a culture war then I'm sorry, but I'm queer and I need representation to literally convince people that I'm a human being worth of respect).
Anita didn't only talk about how characters looked, but also in which roles they were allowed to be versus those they weren't allowed to be in. The damselling of female characters for the sake of the plot so the man could save them for example. Or treating female characters like thropies to be given to men for "the job well done".
I always saw Anita's criticism as "women are put in fixed roles and allowed only certain looks", which is true. Women for the longest time were not allowed to look different than how men who made them imagined an ideal woman looks like. Diversifying this image is the goal of such critique. I don't think her idea or goal was to say that women are too obscenely clothed and all have to be covered up. But it's also true that them being skimpily clad is the norm that doesn't always reflect anything else than what men wanted. Especially if the reward at the end of the game for the assumed male player is to undress a character and see her in a sexy bikini, while for the most of the game she was wearing unisex armor and nobody even knew she was a woman.
Female characters in video games don't have agency or desires of their own. They can't assert how they want to be clothed. It's their creator that decided what they wear and more often than not men find bullshit reasons to put all (not just a few but all of them) female characters in video games into skimpy clothes that border on the absurd (like that one character that "breathed through her skin"). From meta standpoint any explanation inside the game is an excuse "why the creator wanted the character to look this way", nothing more.
If men who made those games saw women as people they would not make all women look like supermodels clad in metal bikinis for their own consumption, but would show us women in various types of clothing, with various types of bodies and with various types of personalities. (Not to mention it would also be betetr for male players to interact with various women, especially if most oif them are asusmed to be love interests). And would definitely not let camera ogle their bodies in a way that takes away from their individuality and makes the player forget that they're people.
That's also why for example the author of Stardew Valley was so praised by feminist media scholars. There was an interview done with him, where he was asked how he managed to write such great female characters and he simply said that he didn't try to write women, he tried to write people. That's one of the issues male writers of medias have - they have some tereotypical idea of what woman is and how she thinks and behaves, and then write women as such, and real women are often baffled by that image. Ofc there are real women that behave this way, but there are also a lot of women who don't. Not to mention that even real woman behaving in a way that men thinks she does, has more depth than most of those female characters combined. Hence the jokes women often make about "women written by men versus women written by women".
@@swtormadness did you type this based on my comment or my channels content because im agreeing with the original comment and talking about the weirdos altering the fallout actresses body and screaming about some anti woke culture war...we are on the same page why did you make me read this. please re read my comment carefully but im going to edit my comment to make things a little more clear but for the record im opposition of the idea there's a conspiracy to uglify video games characters because diversity bad you will find me up and down this comment section with that same opinion. i started my comment with AND because i was adding on to what they were saying not disagreeing but thanks for trying to educate me if by chance i was one of those chuds
"She taught me that the problem isn't sexuality at all. It's that women in video games, for a long time, felt like they were MANDATED to have T&A regardless of the context."
Putting 'T&A' on given female character is always regardless of the context because it is arbitrary choice(to say otherwise is itself problematic).
So it is still the sexuality that is the problem.
thats not Mass Effect 3, thats Andromeda
It's a discusion between centrists who think they are leftists and centrists who think they are right wing.
Do we really have to refight a battle from a decade ago?
It's preety disingenuous to say Senran Kagura being more or less killed is capitalism's fault when it's not just that Sony doesnt want to make fanservice games anymore, it's that they don't want to allow that kind of game on their console at all, and I'm preety sure that's a preety big difference.
And even IF we went with the "well, they dont want it because it doesn't appeal to the wider audience" idea, how would you explain that they accepted Stellar Blade? Hell, Stellar Blade being a fanservice game was seen as a big deal BECAUSE it's being released in the middle of Sony's "no fanservice allowed" era.
EDIT: exanding on other things in the video, because might as well
-"The big companies see this kind of game doesnt sell so they take their resources elsewhere"
Again, this doesn't make sense. If this was true then Sony would just release games with no fanservice and that would be that, but they actively want to restrict that kind of content from other creators as well. At that point it's not about that kind of game selling well or not, it's ideological.
Hell, if your point about niche games was true, why would they promote indies like, say, Goodbye Vocano High? That's a preety niche game. And this is just talking about Sony. If you're talking about the wider industry then niche indie stuff gets promoted all the time.
-The point about le manufactored controversy doesn't even make sense. To start a controversy you need 2 sides. If there wasn't a side that actively wanted all attractive characters in videogames gone there could be no controversy at all. At most you'd have some people gloating about Stellar Blade being released and nobody else caring (and, funnily enough, this was basically what was happening until your people started throwing shit at le gamer chuds). But corporations didn't force them to do that, they did it themselves.
-"You should be complaining about conservative politicians!!!"
I have to assume this is disingenuous on purpose, because it's preety obvious that da conservative politicians have not been the main voices calling for videogame censorship for at LEAST a decade.
-"Safe horny does not exist"
People pretend that anyone that likes "traditionally attractive" (aka just attractive) anime girls is a predator now, come on.
dude you said it yourself the chuds kept arguing amongst themselves fighting ghosts...but it got annoying and everyone said shut the fuck up. thats it there is no controversy its just right wing grifters the same accounts yelling about stellar blade have already moved on to complaining about fem custodes because they never cared about the game just the culture war.
Based comment
I hate to say it, but the South Korea gaming industry is not helping Ukraine. Some companies still operate Russia servers, Stellar Blade developer Shift Up erased Soline's hairpin, which is reminiscent of the Ukraine flag. I am embarrassed as a Korean.
Ik Gamers (TM) like to revise history but the issue has never been the "suppression" of conventionally attractive characters but to engage meaningfully with them. The issue is that 1. they were the only representation for female gamers AND 2. they werent treated as much as respect as their male counterparts.
Censorship is their [gamers tm] way to engage with art, as shown during both "gamergate" harassment campaigns. They are the ones pushing for the absence of "politics" (and the "suppression" of regular gamers) in a genre, they feel entitled to act as "proprietors" of. Exhausting little pos.
🙄🙄🙄
Removing Abby from the conversation The Last of Us 2 was "just" a bad game... so it clearly wasn't a money argument
I still hold onto that the future will redeem Forespoken
I personally want every game to find its audience, but I'd be lying if I said Forespoken was something that I personally enjoyed.
I feel ya, still got my copy and no regrets for enjoying it.
(Of course, still no PS5 but one day, will have my own fun as I've watched a couple of playthroughs on UA-cam. 😎)
33:22 its off topic but it clicked me the same way on the side of movies.
Like same argumemts here and there being similar.
Hell, even amother place where i stay in the middle, just being a casual for such. 😅
Just look at how these clowns turn on Helldivers 2.
can we get good games?
All japanese/asian games, and indie western games like Risk of Rain, Binding of Isaac or No Man's Sky.
I like waffles
Nice video. I'll be checking out more from you now (this was my first).
I agree that this controversy is total BS. The game looks fun, but it's not breaking any new ground. I'll pick it up eventually when it comes out on PC with a discount.
For the record, I'm a woke leftist game dev, a trans woman, I like women, and some of my favourite games are Bayonetta, NieR: Automata, Soul Calibur, P.N.03, and Dead or Alive. That said, I enjoy and appreciate more diverse characters in media and there's no reason we shouldn't have even more.
soul calibur is so good im mad i didnt get soul calibur 6 till last week but even with few players the games awesome
@@KalicoKal Agreed. It's not a fighting game I take "seriously", but it's so much fun to play casually with friends. And though they really messed up the customisation mode (UI, bad options, loading times, etc.), it's still nice to be able to make cool custom digital dolls/action figures/cosplayers.
@@bunnybreaker no fr the customization is the best part where else can i fight a skeleton man, bruce lee, and somebodies waifu with same fighting style lol
@@KalicoKal IKR! You're making me want to download it again. Gotta see how my medieval Gambit, Ironman, and assorted waifus are doing 😁
Great video commentary!
Before the comments get as wild as expected, just want to say I enjoy your vids, and at just halfway through this one at the moment, pretty much agree with the gist of it. SB has been weird lightning rod for something that's just kinda...there. The game isn't making some wild point, even in its inherent visual design.
Yeah, I am a little worried about how all the comments have been fairly positive at this point. It's like I'm waiting for the inevitable storm.
Great video! The games i play is not as popular when i realize few years ago.
Interesting topic on "Safe S**" because i never bother to engage to random people unless its a topic I'm familiar with like Pokémon.
I thought you add the Pokémon Go recent update in the video.
Sadly, the Pokemon Go controversy and Hades 2's character designs came out after I finished editing this video.
@@agramuglia ah hopefully part 2 of this situation or somehow add to other topics you have in the works.
@@agramuglia also what interesting that casuals of Pokémon Go not liking the avatars in tictok.
The Discord for the game has to crack down on idiots like this.
senran kagura is my favorite echii series
Another great video. Cool first name btw.
Excellent level-headed breakdown of the situation!
- I remember watching a demo playthrough of Stellar Blade and the moment you see a character for the first time I busted out laughing. Giant boobs just flopping around with a bored / sleepy looking face above. Reminded me of "why is her boob bigger than her head" from Xenoblade 2.
- The issue with these characters isn't that they're designed to be sexy/titilating. It's that they don't dress themselves (i.e. there's no reason to believe that these characters would choose to look like this). This is in contrast to someone like Bayonetta that absolutely does dress herself.
- Also Eve is based on a real woman in that she kind of looks like her and she was used for motion capture. That woman does not have the same proportions and general air brushed looks.
- Saying "games should be fun" is extremely reductive.
- This video went off the rails around the 60% mark...
Dude it's a videogame clam down.
Akready done my thing, clicked on do not reccomend channel.
Watched more of your video, and while you make some fair points there are two points that I disagree with you on :
1) You make a claim around the six minute mark that sexy women hasn't changed much over the years, when that isn't true. Since sexy women and fan service in gaming in general has been on the decline since Sony move the gaming HQ over to California back around 2016. Since, then, Sony California ( which is arguably the most left wing state next to New York) has demanded game developers town down sexy female characters, with the creator of famous sexy series "Senran Kagura " talking about his frustrations of NOT being allowed to express his artistic visions. To be clear, XSEED, which is the the name of the developer company is a third party developer, so they DIDN'T NEED to rely on Sony funding to get a game made, so that wasn't the issue on why Sony told them to stop with the excessive fan service, it was just a difference in beliefs in what should be allowed in games. That said, Sony California isn't the only problem either, since companies have embraced programs like ESG ( which is a program that MANY left wing companies have praised), which incentivizes developers to include more left wining beliefs in games, such as DEI, LGBT, etc. And heavily sexualized women is generally frowned upon. It's why in recent years Japanese developers that embraced ESG like Capcom have toned down the fans ervice in their games like SF6( Juri's default character design being toned down to what she originally had in 4) and Re3 remake( Jill's character design toned down to what she had in OG 3) and RE4 remake ( where a lot of what some people considered "sexists and "misogynistic" remarks" Leon made to women were removed from the original). Yes, you could argue that there is a little bit of fan service in certain areas of these games, but there is no denying that there is a collective effort to tone it down. And If you combine these two things. It's no wonder that we've seen less of sexy women in gaming in recent years. And yes, many western games HAVE made women look less traditionally beautiful. Just look at Mary Jane in Spider man 2 ( who looks like a transgender man). And That's fine if your ok with it, but it is undeniably happening.
2) There's been plenty of people complaining about Stellar Blade based on the female character on the opposite side of the reactionaries. The most obvious one being the infamous IGN article where the writer makes the outright disrespectful claim about the devs "never seen a living woman" And I'm glad your willing to acknowledge it in your video. And there's several other articles that are in that mindset as well. And that's not even mentioning the countless tweets mocking people who like Eve's design on twitter.
Where I do agree with you is that a Companies main goal is to make money, and will follow any trend to make it. Which is why I and MANY other gamers ( both male AND female) are supporting Stellar Blade to show developers that there is STILL a market for this (sexy women in action games). And currently the game's selling great now so we've succeeded in our mission.
SHIFT UP was always that UP-front. this is a great discussion (video), can't wait for the PC port.
EDIT: BTW there was Neptunia x SENRAN KAGURA: Ninja Wars
Anita's puritan viewpoints has really poisoned any chances for gamers to join any left-leaning groups, because even leftists dislike Anita for said puritan viewpoints, so now they think all leftist groups are like her. But there have been times where I wonder she had a point whenever I see gamers bragging about wanting a game if it has any women that appeals to their kink. For example, foot lovers only interested in a game if it contains any female characters who are barefoot, be it playable or as an NPC.
dont give them too much credit theyed rather believe someone that openly and is actively calling gaming a waste of time just cause they said games and movies are going woke
All leftists groups are like her. It always turns into policing others and being misandrist
Anita wouldn't even be that notorious had people not given her any attention.
the people that care for 14:12 these type issues usually dont play games or dont even care about them,but see in a negative way in there options which...wouldddd bee okkk if they weren't straight up demanding changes to things they don't understand and not interested in.
Compared to most videos talking about this, you made a very smart conversation of the subject, a breath of fresh air 👌 I really like playing the demo, and I can't wait for its release. I hope this story around it will mostly shut up after release.
Verbatim, the first thing I thought when I saw the initial trailer for Stellar Blade was; “Oh it’s just Bayonetta with a bland character and a different combat system” and never gave it a second thought. Considering the trash fire that has been in its fandom of “revolutionary character design & direction” and its lukewarm arrival of just being an OK game, I’m glad I skipped out on it.
Wait, they say "safe" sexy is "weird" and niche stuff, and "unsafe" sexy is vanilla and mainstream?
Did you ask these people if they also believe that "War is Peace", "Freedom is Slavery" and especially if "Ignorance is Strength"?
Because this type of reversal reminds me of something...
Lara Croft was never in Playboy magazine, but one model who portrayed her at conventions, Nell McAndrew, was. Eidos responded by firing her and taking legal action against Playboy for putting the Tomb Raider logo on the cover of their magazine, since they didn't want Lara Croft to be associated with Playboy.
What's hilarious is to me that they started literally because of the anti woke crowd and personally I played the game myself and to be honest its a good meh game for me but it's not DMC 5 or Vanquish. I was disappointed because I assumed the game was going to be a more Vanquish clone, and I like Vanquish. When I played the game I was a little disappointed and annoyed as fuck cause I felt the game was trying to be a Bayonetta clone.
"How apple humanely sourced their materials and how they are going to save the earth" #ESG #DEI #LarryBehaviormustbeenforcedFink
The gamers are weird
ANOTHA BANGER
I think its telling that the right wing backlash against seems to avoid the capitalist explanation. If someone acknowledged that the forces of the market were pushing games away from the things they agree with, they'd have to find some way to renconcile that- either their own beliefs or capitalism has to be in error. By introducing the controversy and conspiracy or leftists infiltrating and corrupting media, they can avoid that entire issue.
Rightoids don't think greed is real, they blame it on "BlackRock".
Because, obviously, big booba wiafu is the peak of art and woman with no makeup in the literal apocalypse is WOKE
But conspiracies are fun 🥲
Kinda skipped over the whole internal sony policy barring fanservicey games and citing #metoo for the whole removal of it. Even the devs backed it up
This is an ideologically driven video. Of course they’re not going bring up the relevant points as to why this discussion is happening
The side that doesn't like game journalists are reacting to what they see as a threat to the chances of games they like being produced.
They think the game journalists will convince the corporations to make less sexy games I guess.
1:52 This tweet reads as the kind of thing someone that constantly calls people corn addicts would say even if that wasn’t your intention
7:23 Baldurs Gate 3 is okay because its safe horn (letting you have fun with a bear is fine because there are no scantily clad women on the box art)
19:28 they are, not just senran kagura because the ps4 version of nekopara is censored while the switch version isnt (both japanese companies but only one of them has their HQ in California, can you guess which?
20:50 Senran Kagura Burst Re:Newal came out a year before that interview and was censored on PS4
23:41 Why are companies making decisions that lose them money then??? When steam bans a game they lose money so what other possible explanation is there for their actions? There is someone at steam that has a personal hatred for certain types of games and will ban them (Chaos;Head NoaH, Evenicle 2 and Angelic Chaos RE-BOOT) the only reason Chaos;Head was unbanned is because of its popularity and they said they would fix this issue but it is still happening
35:02 safe just means not objectifying women
Surely you recognize the absurdity of beastiality being "safe"
@@ktg619 yes
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